Igor Drljaca made an auspicious feature-film
debut at the 2012 Festival with Krivina,
which detailed a Bosnian man's return to
his post-war homeland. Drljaca has reunited
with one of that film's leads — the magnetic
Jasmin Geljo — for his new film The Waiting
Room, an acute observation of the Bosnian
diaspora in Canada.

Sarajevo-born actor Jasmin (Jasmin
Geljo) lives in Toronto with his wife,
Patricia (Ma-Anne Dionisio), and his
ten-year-old son, Daniel (Filip Geljo).
Though he was a respected actor in pre-war
Yugoslavia, here in Canada Jasmin is consistently
typecast. He makes a modest
living as a construction worker while constantly
auditioning (more often than not,
for the roles of criminals), and periodically
performs the culturally specific Bosnian
comedy skits that have made him somewhat
popular amongst Toronto's Yugoslav
community. But Jasmin is going through
a difficult time with Patricia and his disillusioned
teenage daughter, Sonja (Masa
Lizdek), and he feels less and less able to
communicate or engage meaningfully with
society and family alike. When he is offered
a part in an art installation about a family's
vacation trip during the Bosnian War, the
role triggers his own wartime memories
and leads him to unsettling questions about
what lies ahead.

From the opening shot to the last, The
Waiting Room is steeped in the idea of performance,
both personal and cultural. With
startling honesty, and a lyricism that's based
in raw reality, it chronicles a set of rarely
seen difficulties endemic to the immigrant
experience. This is a forcefully political
film about an unpredictable and fascinating
character — a man who, struggling for integration,
holds onto art as the most valuable
tool he has for making sense of his world.